


Bruised

by smallbrownfrog



Category: Once and Future King Series - T. H. White
Genre: Approximately Canon Levels of Violence (more than T. H. White & less than Malory), Canon Compliant, M/M, Medieval Medicine, Missing Scenes, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5490695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallbrownfrog/pseuds/smallbrownfrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Arthur orders Lancelot to accompany him to the Roman Wars, and Lancelot is not happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bruised

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abbichicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/gifts).



> This story takes place right at the beginning of the Roman war, during which Arthur took on the Roman Emperor Lucius and won. (This is the same Roman excursion that T.H White covers in chapter Five of The Ill-Made Knight and that Sir Thomas Malory had described before him in Le Morte D'arthur.)
> 
> The Teen rating is for violence. If you have specific severe triggers, I've listed more warnings in the end notes.

> “Arthur’s reaction to the problem was complicated. Merlin’s warning about his lady and his best friend had contained within itself the seeds of its own contradiction, for your friend can hardly be your friend if he is also going to be your betrayer. Arthur adored his rose-petalled Guenever for her dash, and had an instinctive respect for Lancelot, which was soon to become affection. This made it difficult either to suspect them or not to suspect.”
> 
> “The conclusion which he came to was that it would be best to solve the problem by taking Lancelot with him to the Roman war. That, at any rate, would separate the boy from Guenever, and it would be pleasant to have his disciple with him—a fine soldier—whether Merlyn’s warning were true or not.”  
>  —T.H.White in _The Once and Future King_

 

> “...wherefore Sir Launcelot was wroth”  
>  —Sir Thomas Malory in _Le Morte D'arthur_

 

If you ever get so thoroughly lost that you end up in Sandwich, England, you will find a quaint little, quiet little town that even the tourists have forgotten. The whole place is several miles in from the seacoast and even farther from wherever you actually meant to go. There is a thoroughly inconvenient train (2 hours to London) and an even more inconvenient river, with water so silted up that it’s best left to captains who like small boats and tricky navigation.

It’s not possible to imagine a more unlikely place to assemble an armada. Yet, strangely enough, it was once a good spot to launch a military expedition.

The Sandwich of King Arthur’s days had not yet gotten slow and sleepy. It hadn’t been stranded high and dry by the sea’s inexorable retreat. It wasn’t strangled in soft silt. It was a thriving seaport full of sailors, smugglers, fishermen, and wool merchants. It had a brothel staffed by bawds, a hospital staffed by brothers religious, and a market staffed by anybody with a healthy pair of lungs.

Better yet, Sandwich had a contractual obligation to supply warships to their King, and fifteen ships ready to sail. So, when Arthur mustered his fighting men for war with Rome, Sandwich was the logical place to begin.

Many kings had pledged their support to Arthur, and they all arrived on schedule with knights and horses and fighting men. Soon the harbor at Sandwich resembled a floating town. Every sort of ship had been pressed into service. There were great galleys: long slender ships powered by crews of well-thewed rowers. There were dromounds: big hulking ships used for war and trade. There were modern cogs with their new fangled decks and little towers. There were older cogs, open to the sky and the weather.

The town itself turned into an all-day festival of drinking and dance. People dragged out holiday decorations, quite out of season. Taverns ran out of mead. Little children couldn’t help cheering for the brave knights and running in dizzy circles until their mothers took them to task.

By now the commoners had come to understand Arthur’s crusade against unfair power and Might. They wanted Arthur to defeat the Roman emperor, not just because Arthur was their King, and not just because the Emperor was demanding unjust tribute, but because they loved him.

As the daylight began to fade, the revellers became less boisterous. Here and there a drunk cried into his ale or a good wife solemnly declared that, girl or boy, she would name her next child Arthur.

Finally, the moment of departure arrived. The knights and fighting men were oddly quiet as they boarded their ships in the dark. They spoke rarely and in hushed voices, as though the enemy might hear them from far away Rome. It was a damp, shivery evening. Everything was covered in a kind of clammy dew: wood rails, ropes, the tips of people’s noses. More than one soldier wondered sadly if it might be warmer in the sea.

Yesterday the campfires had rung with drunken merriment and boasts, but now that the moment for departure was at hand, there was a sharp sobriety on their pale faces. Some were simply queasy with drink and with the steady rocking of the boats. Some were considering that they might not come home again in this life.

Only here and there a stubbornly cheerful sailor boy whistled or sang a bit of bawdy song about the ladies he was still too young to swive.

     Som be browne, and some be white,  
     And some be tender as a tripe,  
     And some of theym be chirry ripe

 

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 

Sitting on the hard wood, and wedged in between boxes of gear, Lancelot could hear the ship creak all around him. It was a flat-bottomed high-sided cog with a single sail. It was one of the older models of cog, built before the invention of the fancy ship decks that roofed over the hulls on newer ships. Yet it was sturdy just the same. The hull was made of tightly overlapping oak planks caulked with tarred moss, which was covered in turn by wooden laths. Then the whole thing was held together with iron nails.

Lancelot noticed all these things, but felt strangely removed from his surroundings. Nothing felt quite real. To a casual observer he looked calm, even serene. He did not feel serene.

Malory says that Lancelot was “wroth” because Arthur had not trusted him to stay in Camelot with the Queen. And yes, he was angry. Horribly angry. It was the grinding kind of anger where parts of you fight with other parts until thinking is all but impossible.

Lancelot had only just discovered Jenny, only just discovered the giddy joy of first love, and now he was being taken away from her without even having the chance to commit the crime he was being punished for. Yet the man dragging him away from her was not somebody he knew how to hate. Arthur was the best thing to happen to the world. Hating Arthur would have felt like a betrayal of his own oath of fealty.

So he fought within himself, one part wrestling with another, until he had no thoughts at all. His mind had shut down, gridlocked with conflicting impulses. If you have ever been trapped in a major traffic jam, you may have experienced a violent calm something like this. It is a miserable experience: everybody shoving to get free, yet locked in place, car after car.

To make things worse, not only was it impossible for him to hate Arthur; but he had built his life and identity around him. For three brutal years years Lancelot had tortured his body and mind relentlessly, with the sole goal of shaping himself into someone who might be good enough to be one of Arthur’s knights.

At 18, Lancelot still loved Arthur as an ideal and a cause more than as an actual man. This doesn’t mean that his feelings weren’t real. People have died for less. But it does mean that Arthur moved through his mind with a power, with a glow, that no mere human has. Lancelot’s feelings towards Arthur were growing past the hero worship a teenager gives to a rock star, but his feelings were still far less nuanced than the love you give to a fully formed person. He hadn’t quite learned to see Arthur in three dimensions yet.

And this made him more miserable still. For an ideal is something you must live up to. A hero is someone you must be worthy of. A real person you love is -- well, simply a person you love. But right then and right there, Lancelot had mostly the idealized hero Arthur; and this bright vision in his mind, the Arthur he had sworn to follow, had found him unworthy.

Part way through the night Lancelot gave up on even the pretense of resting. He found a trunk to sit on and looked out. Water filled the world, but he stared out to sea without even seeing the wet, black ocean. “Arthur does not trust me,” he thought. And the words hurt, biting into him over and over.

 

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 

As for Arthur, he was far too busy to be fully aware of Lancelot’s misery.

People kept consulting him about things he was not at all sure he should be consulted about. What did he know about the proper way to pack a ship? Or how to set a sail? He was patently the least knowledgeable person there when it came to all things sailing. Yet the people who consulted him did not seem to see any deficiency in his answers (which were generally their own suggestions handed back to them).

Then, once they arrived ashore in Normandy, there were the requests for help. One of the side effects of founding the Round Table and working against the idea of Might Makes Right was that you got asked for help a lot. These pleas for help often came at incredibly inopportune times, such as when you were trying to fight a war. However, there was no help for it. If you were on the side of chivalry you had to give assistance when asked.

So it was that when Arthur was asked to destroy a particularly vicious giant, which was eating the locals like candy, he couldn’t say, “No,” or, “Could you please wait until I am done winning the war?” He had to say, “Yes.” And he had to look glad to be saying yes.

Still it took a special kind of lunacy for Arthur to sneak off in the dark to go giant hunting in the sea. At least that is what Lancelot thought when he discovered where Arthur had gone.

It was only chance that he found out at all. It was already dark when Lancelot happened to notice that the brazier in Arthur’s tent remained unlit and that his horse was entirely gone. He only became more worried when Sir Bors told him that the King had taken Sir Kay and Sir Bedivere and gone to Saint Michael’s Mount. Unlike Arthur, who had grown up surrounded by a wilderness of trees, Lancelot had some experience with ships and tides. He was all too aware of how calm shores could give way to deadly waves in a heartbeat, and the tides in the area were infamously extreme.

Mont Saint Michel, or as Lancelot knew it, “Saint Michael’s Mount,” was only sometimes an island. However, it wasn’t the island itself that was dangerous. The island itself was solid, stable granite that stayed quietly in one place. It was the bay around it that was a changeable, often deceptive place.

At low tide the Mount turned into a rocky hill in an endless landscape of wet, gray sand. In fact, at low tide you could walk across the sands and (assuming you had not misjudged the tides) walk right up to the rocky hill.

In later years, when it became a site of pilgrimage, processions of the faithful would walk across the sands during low tide. Not all of them made it to the other side though. Losing track of the tides was fatal, and what was solid land at low tide was fathoms deep when the waters rolled in.

And even for those who kept careful track of the tides, there was quicksand that could eat a man entire with no sign that he had ever been there. Even in folktales and legends, the bay was a dangerous place. Several famous works of art show the mythical Harold Godwinson rescuing one of his knights when they supposedly foundered in the quicksand there.

Lancelot seized up some rope, then mounted his riding horse (not his war horse, which was sturdy but too slow) and rode hard for the coast. The tide had come in and he was faced with the vast and indifferent sea. Arthur was either safely across or foolishly gone.

Wearily Lancelot turned back to camp and said his prayers.

 

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 

Arthur had set out during evensong, that time slightly before sunset. At some level, he knew the danger he was in. Yet he felt it would be wrong to send some other person to run his risks. That would be as bad as using a screen of frightened peasants to shield himself in battle. Those days were over.

Also, he did not want to be a braggart and felt no need of an audience. Therefore he took only two knights with him: his foster brother, Sir Kay, and Sir Bedivere. And even those two he left behind at the shoreline.

The sea had left, falling many fathoms to reveal a solid-looking passage to the island. The sand was grey and sometimes black in the fading light. Kay and Bedivere looked uncertain at such a changeable landscape, but Arthur’s horse stepped calmly onto this impossible land and walked as sure-footedly as if he was on dry land.

Arthur did not guide the horse, and yet somehow it walked safely past deep mud and quicksand alike, never pausing until it reached the stony island that stood dark against the sky.

Arthur paused to thank his horse with a firm scratching where its withers met its neck. Then, leaving his horse behind, Arthur climbed the great hill step by slow step as the sun set. Soon he was climbing in starlight, but he made no pause. High on the summit was a great bonfire and it guided his steps.

What he found at the summit was a horrible caricature of Might Makes Right. For there lolled the hideous giant, half naked and surrounded by weeping maidens. Two of the maidens turned a greasy spit over the fire. It held a small beast that Arthur’s mind refused to recognize.

Instead he stood frozen, staring, until the reality struck him: it was a child.

Only his knightly training made him give the creature warning to arm itself, then he was on it with no thought of strategy. He heard the monster’s club whistle over his head even as he cut into its belly. Yet even half-gutted, the monster barely paused.

It dropped its club only to lunge at him and embrace him in a deadly hug. Arthur felt his ribs cracking as the giant fell on him, and they both began rolling down the hill. Malory tells us that they tumbled over each other like waves in a rough sea. One moment Arthur was on top, the next he was underneath. The world spun round them as they half fell, half rolled down the rocky hill.

Every new landing was a jarring pain, yet Arthur was still alive and aware when they reached the edge of the sea. He lay panting in the dead giant’s arms, then drifted into unconsciousness.

 

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 

Lancelot had slept poorly, plagued by dreams of quicksand and shifting tides. So when he woke to loud shouts his first thought was that the tide had somehow reached the camp. His second thought was that they were under attack. Instead, when he looked out, he saw an orderly camp just waking up to the dawn sun. The only thing out of place was a worried looking knot of knights and footmen outside the King’s tent.

By the time Lancelot had dressed and gone up to Arthur’s tent, the small crowd had gone. Against all protocol, he entered to find Arthur sitting shirtless on a folding camp stool while the chirurgeon examined him. The chirurgeon was a little man with a reputation as an excellent barber who wielded a sharp blade. He was also as close to a doctor as one could find in a medieval army on the march.

That’s not to say he was uneducated. He had learned his letters at a monastery school and had read Lanfrank’s _Science of cirurgie_ in its entirety. He was proud of this achievement for it was a lovely book full of what to do for bruises, cuts, broken bones, and disturbances of the humors. So now, as Arthur sat stiffly under his professional hands, the chirurgeon was mentally paging through the book, muttering as he went.

When he saw Lancelot, he curtly gestured him out of the tent, but Arthur smiled weakly and said, “Stay, Lance. We need to talk strategy.” Lancelot was not sure whether it really made sense for him to stay or whether Arthur simply didn’t want to be alone with the chirurgeon. Either way he stayed and wondered what he meant to this man whom he both knew and did not know at all.

Lancelot sat and took Arthur’s hand while the chirurgeon carefully felt the bones of Arthur’s head and chest. The damage to his scalp was mostly hidden by his hair, except for some large gouges down one cheek. These the chirurgeon carefully washed down with good beer. His back, however, was a work of art that put the flowers to shame: deep reds and purples bloomed all up and down his spine.

Tut-tutting to himself, the surgeon quoted: “The wounds that beeth made with bruising, as with smiting of a staff, other stone, other falling, other with smiting of a horse, other with anything semblable to them, haveth great differences from wounds that beeth made with cutting: as with sword, knife, or arrow pricking, & in other manner they shall be healed.”

Touching Arthur’s skin lightly, the barber said, “Sire, you are hot to the touch and plethoric with excess blood. For this to heal properly, I must let out the wicked humors.”

Arthur nodded absently and said, “As you must.”

Arthur flinched, then held still, as the doctor cut him carefully with the sharp little tool which was used for blood letting. It was called a fleam and it had the tiniest blade only half an inch long, just long enough to open a vein, and keep it open, but not large enough to require further healing. Moving carefully and precisely, the barber let a thin trickle of blood begin to run into the cup.

As Lancelot sat there holding the King’s hand, he felt a loosening and a stirring in his heart. This man, tired and in pain as he was, was real and solid flesh, as real as Jenny, as real as Lancelot himself. Lancelot could no longer hide from the fact that he was falling in love, not just with an idea, but with a person.

However, he said nothing, just continuing to hold Arthur’s hand through the blood letting.

**Author's Note:**

> Illustration credits:
> 
> The close up of a book text is from an 1886 edition of Lanfrank's 13th century Science of cirurgie. It is long out of copyright. You can find the rest of the book here: https://archive.org/details/lanfranksscienno10200lanfuoft 
> 
> The Bayeux Tapestry is also old enough that in the US photos of it are public domain.
> 
>  
> 
> Trigger warnings:  
> Brief mention of implied baby cannibalism by giant, dead infant, injury, one on one combat, medieval style blood letting for medical reasons


End file.
